A swift, sharp acceleration into reality
The war has begun.
No, not the skirmish in Ukraine, that’s just a diversion, entertainment in our Twitter feeds. I mean the war on Facebook for hearts, minds, and profile pictures.
“The Ukrainian president is a hero! Almost single-handedly he’s taking on the might of Fascist Russia to fight for freedom and democracy!”
“No, the Ukranians are neo-Nazis, placed in power by the CIA to forment division, drive up oil prices and drag the West into war!”
My timeline is peppered with Ukrainian and Russian flags, back-of-fag-packet analyses of the Donetsk dispute, and gleeful tales of unfriendings. And I’m no better, mind! I became so irate by all the mindless pro-Ukrainian shilling, the inability to see any sort of nuance, the insistence that this is simple matter of ‘victim’ and ‘oppressor’ that I dug out the Russian imperialist flag of the Czars and made that my profile picture, just to make a point.
Of course it failed to make that point. No one is capable of basic discussion any more, let alone consideration of the relative merits and demerits of 19th century style geopolitics, such as they might be, and so I just got angry and felt wretched.
When I started this journal my intent was to track the fall of a civilisation in real time. I had in mind to create a sort of living history, I suppose. We often ask ourselves: “What must it have been like for them back then? What were they thinking, what were they feeling when it happened? Did they understand what was to come next?”
I find myself in the happy position of being able to answer that question, just a few months into this experiment. The answer, however, is crushingly mundane.
I still think about the things I used to think about: considerations on what to make for dinner, a reminder to myself to run a load through the washing machine or I’ll have no good clothes for work, dreams of a nicer kitchen and more luxurious bathroom, one day.
Only now all of those thoughts carry an undercurrent of sort of dislocated doom: ‘Perhaps chicken tonight? Who knows how much longer we’ll be able to get chicken? What will happen when we can’t?’; ‘My jeans are wearing through. Should I invest in three or four good pairs now? Will these months be the last time I’m able to buy jeans?’; ‘Josh would love a bigger kitchen, and a dining area so we can finally have guests. But how can we save if inflation bites hard?’
And then whatever crisis is currently weighing on me lifts: the Covid restrictions are removed, say, and it seems as if everything is going to be alright after all, and perhaps we really can look forward to better days.
Josh and I discussed children recently. It’s a little late for both of us, we’re past 40 already, and there are children from previous relationships, but neither of us were in a good position and there’s still a part of us that longs to do it again, but properly this time.
Yet that too is fraught. Not because it’s wicked to bring children into a wicked world or anything as hopelessly liberal as that. On the contrary, if there is to be any remnant of our culture in a hundred, three hundred, a thousand years hence, we all need to have as many children as we can. But if we need to pick up and run, or fight, at a moment’s notice and there’s a toddler at foot…
I’m fully convinced the uncertainty is driving everyone quite mad. People don’t have real conversations any more. If they want to sound clever they parrot the latest propaganda line from MiniTrue, and congratulate others for doing the same.
And if they are clever they keep quiet and post pictures to social media of happy days out at the beach. If they find another person who understands their first reaction is “Thank God, I thought I was going crazy,” which is followed by a swift, hushed lament about everyone else’s mass delusion: “Why can’t people see what’s going on? Why is the news ignoring what really matters, like the economy and the lies of our leaders? Where are the journalists? Where are the grown-ups? What can be done about it?”
The last question is asked with the most urgency. What can be done? How are we to sidestep calamity, those of us who can see?
The answer is: Nothing. We can’t. There is nowhere to go. The fantasy that we allowed ourselves the luxury of believing - that we could put up with diversity quotas and government ‘investment’ and Davos Man and that it wouldn’t affect us as long as we held on to our own values of hard work and decency - has finally careened headlong into the brick wall of reality.
Too many decent people thought that being decent meant not making a fuss. Yet we are as much a part of this society as every bleating sheep, and we will be brought down by them too. And there’s nothing to stop it now. It’s too late.
We are standing in a building whose foundations have been fatally undermined, and already the first few seismic rumbles are showing up on the radar. All that remains is to wait for the big tremor that will bring the building down around us.